13 years ago, a 19-year-old man from Hong Kong almost lost all his hopes to continue living. This was after his right hand got crushed by the machine, as he was trying to make fishballs.
According to an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Ho Pak-cheong, it was his first day at the factory. Unfortunately for him, it did not turn out well. That is because he just ended up losing four fingers.
"He was only 19 years old and left with a thumb ... no matter what [we] needed to figure out a way to help him," he said.
The paramedics were able to help him salvage the severed fingers. Dr. Ho and the rest of his team even managed to reattach the said fingers by using a surgical process called replantation.
South China Morning Post reports, however, that the severed fingers were already infected with bacteria. This was due to the fresh fish the man used in the fishball machine. A workaround was to completely undo the procedure mentioned above and used his second toe from the left foot. Dr. Ho then transplanted it to the man's right hand, just in between the location where both his index and middle fingers once were.
Three years later, the young man was already using his right hand and could even lift a table slightly. After a couple of physiotherapy sessions and practices, he could hold on to small objects with his thumb and new finger.
Replantation is more than just restoring the integrity of a person's body. It also "brings new meaning to the life of the patient," a statement the chief of service of the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology at Prince of Wales Hospital and Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital said.
Ho and 15 other colleagues are all from both hospitals, with the North District Hospital being part of the New Territories East Cluster Replantation team.
The team is composed of nurses, surgeons, nurses, and occupational therapists and physiotherapists. They have all together helped 233 patients get treated in the last 16 years, which is more than one-third of the 629 replantation cases seen in Hong Kong's public hospitals.
